The Book of Dave

1

The Hack’s Party

JUN 523 AD*

Carl Dévúsh, spindle-shanked, bleach-blond, lampburnt, twelve years old, kicked up buff puffs of sand with his bare feet as he scampered along the path from the manor. Although it was still early in the first tariff, the foglamp had already bored through the cloud and boiled the dew off the island. As he gained height and looked back over his shoulder, Carl saw first the homely notch of Manna Bä, then the shrub-choked slopes of the Gayt rising up beyond it. The sea mist had retreated offshore, where it hovered, a white-grey bank merging with the blue screen above. Wot if Eye woz up vair, Carl thought, up vair lyke ve Flyin I? He put himself in this lofty perspective and saw Ham, floating like a water beetle, thrusting out angled legs of grey stone deep into the placid waters of its ultramarine lagoon. The waters intensified the beetle island’s myriad greens: its golden wheatie crop, its purple, blue and mauve flowering buddyspike, its yellowy banks of pricklebush and its feathery stands of fireweed. The whole lustrous shell was picked out by a palisade of blisterweed, the lacy umbels of which trimmed the entire shoreline.

The real island was quite as vivified as any toyist vision, the southeast-facing undulation of land audibly hummed. Bees, drugged by the heat, lay down in the flowers, ants reclined on beds of leaf mould, flying rats gave a liquid coo-burble – then stoppered up. To the south a few gulls soared above the denser greenery of the Ferbiddun Zön.

The little kids who’d left the manor with Carl had run on ahead, up the slope towards the Layn, the avenue of trees that formed the spine of Ham. These thick-trunked, stunted crinkleleafs bordered the cultivated land with a dark, shimmering froth. Carl saw brown legs, tan T-shirts and mops of curly hair flashing among the trunks as the young Hamsters scattered into the woodland. Reedy whoops of joy reached Carl’s ears, and he wished he could go with them into Norfend, galumphing through the undergrowth, sloshing into the boggy hollows to flush out the motos, then herd them towards their wallows.

Up from the manor in a line behind Carl came the older lads – those between ten and fourteen years old – whose graft it was to oversee the motos’ wallowing, before assigning the beasts their day’s toil. Despite everything, Carl remained the acknowledged gaffer of this group, and, as he swerved off the path along one of the linchets dividing the rips, the other eight followed suit, so that the whole party were walking abreast, following the bands of wheatie as they rolled up the rise.

Carl remembered how this ground had been in buddout, each rip mounded with a mixture of moto dung, seaweed, birdshit and roof straw. The motos had deftly laid their own fresh dung, but the other ingredients had to be dug from the byres, scraped from the rocks and gathered from the shore by the older girls and opares. Next the mummies laboriously dragged truckle after truckle of the mixture up from the manor, before spreading and digging it into the earth with their mattocks. There were no wheels on Ham – save for symbols of them – and therefore no cars or vans either, so the Hamsterwomen tilled the long rips themselves – a team of six yoked to the island’s sole plough, with its heavy irony share. Now the ripening wheatie stood as high as his knees, and it looked as if it would be a good crop this year – not that Carl would necessarily be there to see the mummies grind it under the autumn foglamp, their bare breasts nuzzling the hot stone of their querns as they bent sweatily to the graft.

– Ware2, guv, said Billi Brudi, catching Carl’s eye as they reached the linchet bordering the next rip and together stepped over it.

– 2 Nú Lundun, Carl replied.

– Ware2, guv, Sam Brudi chipped in – and his brother Billi chimed up:

– 2 Nú Lundun.

Then Gari Edduns uttered the salutation, and Peet Bulluk made the response – and so it went along the line. Between them the nine lads represented all the six families of Ham, the Brudis, Funches, Edduns, Bulluks, Ridmuns and Dévúshes. Good, solid Ingish names – all from the Book, all established on Ham from time out of mind, as rooted as smoothbark and crinkleleaf.

At the top of the slope the land formed a sharp ridge, which fell away in narrow terraces to the waters of Hel Bä. On a knoll on the far side of the water stood one of the five old round towers the Hamsters called giants’ gaffs, foglight flashing from its chipped wall. Carl’s companions, having reached the edge of the home field, followed the dyke up to the Layn, then walked south along it for three hundred paces, to where a stand of pines guarded the moto wallows. Carl parted from the group and took one of the terraces that curled round the bay to the foot of the tower. Here, in the crete rubble, a few dwarfish apple trees had taken root. He found a level flag and sat down.

Twigs stubbed him through his coarse T-shirt. Brown and white butterflies flip-flopped over a stand of fireweed. Bees came doodling down from the bank of pricklebush that rose up, barring the way to the Ferbiddun Zön. Carl tracked the sticky-arsed stopovers as they wavered down to the water’s edge, where squishprims, dry-vys and heaps of other blooms grew between the hefty, hairy stalks of the blisterweed. A stone’s throw into the bay the submarine reef of seaweed and Daveworks eddied and swirled in the sluggish swell. Carl could see the bright, red shells of the crabs that teemed on the reef, and in the muddy shallows of the lagoon little gangs of rusty sprats flickered.

Carl leaned his head against a bar of old irony and stared at the delicate tracery of lichen that covered the crete at his feet – living on dead, dead on deader. A low clattering buzz roused him, and, peering at one of the apple trees, he saw that its trunk was mobbed with a dense cluster of golden flies, which spread and agitated their wings the better to suck up the bigwatt rays of the now fully risen foglamp. To leave all this – how would it be possible – this life mummy that cuddled him so?

Carl had been to this spot maybe two or three times with Salli Brudi – and that was forbidden. They’d get a cuff from their daddies and a bigger clump from the Driver if they were found out. The last time she’d whipped off her cloakyfing and wound it around her pretty ginger head like a turban. As she bent low, the neck of her T-shirt gaped open, showing her tiny titties; yet Carl understood there was no chellish vanity in this – Salli was too young. She held a Davework in her hand: it was the size of a baby’s finger, a flat black sliver with a faint-cut mark.

– Wot chew fink, Carl, she asked him, reel aw toyist?

Carl took the Davework from her; his thumb traced the edge, once jagged but now smoothed by its millennia-long meander through the lagoon since the MadeinChina. He looked closely at the mark for the shapes of phonics.

– C eer, Sal, he said, beckoning her closer, iss an éd, C ve eer, an vose lyns muss B … Eye dunno … sowns aw sumffing … mebë.

– So toyist? She was disappointed.

– Toyist, deffo. He flung it decisively away from them, and it whirred like a sickseed for a few moments before falling into the grass.

Carl started up – what was the point in such dumb imaginings? Cockslip an bumrub, nodditankijelli snuggul. Sal Brudi ul B up ve duff soon enuff bì wunnuvose ugli öl shitters … No, he best forget it, forget her – and get up to the wallows. Whatever might happen in the next few days, this tariff he had graft to do, important graft.

When Carl arrived the other lads were milling between the seven conical wallows, darting among the motos to kiss and cuddle them. Peet was guiding Boysi by his jonckheeres up the steep steps of the highest wallow.

– Ul luv í ven yer inní, Boysi, he was saying, U no U will, yeah, U no U will.

Boysi turned his big pink muzzle, and his little blue eyes, buried in their fleshfolds, twinkled with recognition. Carwl! Carwl! the moto lowed, Carwl, wawwow wiv mee, wawwow wiv mee!

Carl let out a peal of laughter – it was impossible to stay gloomy for long when the motos were being wallowed. Boysi’s dam, Gorj, was already half submerged in the next wallow along, snorting and funnelling her lips to squirt the weedy-green water over her wallow mates. Hands of humans and hands of motos shot above the earthen parapet, flinging screenwasher arcs of droplets as they mucked about.

– Eye carn, Boysi, Carl cried, Eye gotta fynd Runti, iss iz turn, iss iz big dä.

– F slorwa, f slorwa! Hack cummin, Hack cummin! the beast chanted as he heaved himself up the last two steps to the top of the wallow, then plunged in, dragging Peet with him. Other motos took up this cry:

– F slorwa, f slorwa, Hack cummin, Hack cummin!

While Carl doubted any of them truly understood what the slaughter was, the motos knew it was connected with the visitors who were due.

Even the littlest mopeds such as Chukki and Bunni were alive to what visitors brought with them. After the Hack’s party arrived, at least half the lads who mushed the motos would be sick with the pedalo fever, so the beasts would be free to cruise as they wished, clear along the underwood to the curryings, and even into the zones, where they’d thieve the gulls’ eggs and stuff themselves with shrooms. Motos were soppy things, yet, sorry as they might be for their young mushers, being shot of them was a buzz. Day by day they could be relied on to do as told: Rootaht vat rat coloni, grubbup vis unnerwood, gé shottuv vat notweed. However, left to their own devices, they’d soon be babyishly dry-humping, which could well lead to motorage. Then they’d run amok, trampling down the walls of their own wallows, or even crash into the Hamsters’ gaffs. Each year one or two of the friskier males would have to be gelded.

Carl stood watching as first one moto, then the next, was coaxed up and eased over into a wallow, until all seven were occupied. The other motos waited their turn, snuffling and licking each other’s buttocks and flanks. Each elevated pool of muddy water was just broad enough to hold one of the creatures. Once in, they used their webbed feet and hands to turn in a tight circle, ducking their little mushers.

By now the bank of sea mist had pulled still further away from the island, far enough for Carl to make out the outcropping of the gull roost at Nimar, five clicks away at the very tip of the long spit that extended from the northern island of Barn. It was around this promontory that the Hack’s pedalo would come with its load of sick fares bound for Ham, the isle of the Driven-by-Dave.

Carl thought about the Beastlyman, the tongueless exile who lived at Nimar. On summer days such as this, he could be seen from the highest point of Ham, skipping among the rocks – or, rather, the gulls he disturbed could be seen, flapping aloft and eluding his clumsy, hungry grasp. Last summer Carl had been taken for the first time on a fowling expedition over to Nimar, and, while the other Hamstermen snared prettybeaks and grabbed oilgulls from their nests, he’d guarded the pedalo at its mooring. It was typical that the youngest birder should be left like this, to suffer the repeated attacks of the bonkergulls, who, determined to protect their nests, dived at Carl again and again, trying to plant their sharp beaks in his head.

None of the dads had bothered to tell Carl from whom he was guarding the pedalo, so when the Beastlyman crept up and Carl was confronted by an emaciated figure, clad in a long filthy cloakyfing, its beard and hair matted with dirt, its hands cracked and broken, he was totally freaked out. They’d stared at one another for a long time, with only a few feet separating them. Oilgulls that had escaped the hands of Carl’s mates screamed overhead. The Beastlyman opened his mouth and tried to give voice as well, and Carl saw in the dark cave the red root where his tongue had once been, uselessly writhing in the gargling gale of the dad’s madness. Carl said, Ware2, guv, but the Beastlyman only flinched as if struck by the greeting, then scrabbled round on the rocks and scrambled away.

When the dads returned to the pedalo, the corpses of many birds stuck by the neck into their tight leather belts, their beards damp with sweat, Carl told them what – or who – he had seen.

– So Uve clokked ve Beestlimun, av U, Carl, said his stepdad, Fred. Eyem glad, yeah, coz thass wottul áppen 2 U if U go on fukkinabaht in ve zön wiv Tonë!

Fukka Funch, never one to miss the opportunity for a crude jape, thrust his bacon schnozz in Carl’s face and did a Beastlyman shtick, gargling and spitting until Fred snapped:

– Thass enuff!

His half-brother Bert broke in on Carl’s reverie, asking:

– Djoo wan me 2 cumman gé Runti wiv U?

– Nah, nah, he stuttered, vis iss tween me an ím an Dave. U an ve lads betta gé ve wallowin dun an pack ve uvvers orf. Runti – eez mì mayt. Av U ló sed yer tartars 2 Runti? he called to the wallowing motos.

– Goo-bì, Wunti, goo-bì! they lisped in response.

– Catch U lò bakkat ve manna, Carl called to the other lads, then he started down off the crest of the hill and into the woodland.

The first few paces Carl took were between well-spaced, carefully pruned apple trees, the turf beneath them moto mown. The warm air was fruitylicious and butterfly rustled. As he went further down into the Wess Wúd, the orchard gave way to smoothbark trees, some of which had been allowed to grow straight and true, while others were cut back to near their mossy green roots, so that they erupted in a clatter of withies. He bore to the right, crashing through the brack and keeping the winking jewels of Mutt Bä at a constant distance below him.

Carl had a pretty good idea where Runti would be waiting for him. The moto loved to graze in the deep thicket of rhodies and whippystalk that choked the Perg, the long barrier of brick and crete that divided the Wess Wúd from Norfend. There were odd hollows and man-made terraces here, full of strange flowers and shrubs that the Hamsters had no names for, since they were too rare and peculiar to be of any use. However, the Perg was an ancient name, and Effi, Carl’s nan, had told him that it too had once been regarded as a zone forbidden to the Hamsters. She had cradled the little lad in her bony arms and said, Nó bì Dave, luv, nah, ee wooden giv a toss abaht such fings, but ferbiddun bì olda gods, yeah. Her fleshy nose twitched in his hair. Bì Jeebus an Ali.

Carl found Runti a little way inside the Perg. The big moto had his front paws up on a lump of crete and was cropping on a plant with glossy, serrated leaves. The fodder was caught up in his muzzle as if he had a spiky beard, and Carl couldn’t help but laugh at the sight. Runti stopped munching and his mouth fell open, showing his lolling pink tongue and his peg teeth braided with vegetative threads.

– Cawl? he lisped. Ithatoo?

– Yeah, iss me, Runti. Iss me.

The boy struggled through the barbed boughs of a stunted tree and came right up to the moto so that he could hug his head – a head so large that, even pressing his tank against the jowls, Carl could only just join his hands in the rough bristles at the back of the moto’s neck. They stood like that for some time, the moto’s blubbery eyes squished against the lad’s chest, his veggie breath rasping on Carl’s shirt.

– Iss tym, Runti, Carl cooed, tym fer yer slorta, yeah? Ve Acks partë ul B eer vis tariff or ve nex, an Eye gotta tayk yer bak 2 ve manna.

– Slorwa, the moto said wonderingly, slorwa.

– Thass rì, Runti, slorta. Weel uze yaw meet 2 feed ve Ack an iz dads, yer oyl fer vair woonz, an yul be wiv Dave á lars, yeah.

– In Nú Lundun.

– Yeah, thass rì, Carl said, kissing Runti delightedly, in Nú Lundun. It mattered not what doubts the lad had, for, in this article at least, the creature’s simple faith and his own scepticism were at one.

They took all morning to get back to the manor. Carl led Runti round the northern end of the Perg, then up and down the bumps and dips of Sandi Wúd. He’d played here with Runti all of his life. When he’d been a tiny boy, the moto had minded him – and when he grew older, he had minded the moto. They revisited all of their favourite haunts: the big hollow crinkleleaf that stood at the edge of the curryings, the ridged bark of which was perfect for scratching moto hide; the boggy slough in Turnas Wúd, where Runti could wallow; the grove of silverbarks in the heart of the wood, where they stopped so that Carl could tear off A4 strips and feed them to Runti on the palm of his hand.

They ambled on with Carl’s arm slung around Runti’s neck, or, when the undergrowth grew thick, he’d tailgate so he could grab the moto’s cock and balls. Feeling his touch, Runti gently squeezed his mighty haunches together, lisping:

– Thath ware.

– Yeah, Carl answered him, thass ware.

And he recalled the great beast’s final mating: his feet crunching on the frosted leaf fall, his hot breath clouding the sharp kipper air, while Runti’s hands scrabbled to gain purchase on the barrel back of old Gorj. Such tiny genitals the motos had – they could never have mated without human help. Surely this alone proved that men and motos were meant to be together? Together on Ham – and together for eternity in New London. How could the Driver ever doubt it?

Towards the beginning of the second tariff, boy and moto trudged back up to the Layn, crossed over it and broke through the last tattered curtain of leaves. Below them they could see the gaffs of the manor, its bay and the easterly cape of the island. From behind this – just that moment emerging – came the prow of the Hack’s pedalo, a sharp black wedge against the brilliant sea. Carl could make out five pedalers on each side of the vessel, and deep in its well the heads of at least fifteen more fares. Yes, it was a big enough party this year. An weel mayk em elfy wyl vey mayk us sikk, Carl muttered. He turned to the moto and kissed it on its snub nose. Cummon, luv, iss time 2 go 2 Dave. Then they ambled off down the hill.

The six gaffs of the Hamsters’ little manor were set in two rows of three, on each side of an evian stream that was rich in irony. At the western end a seventh – used as a travelodge – was built above the spring itself. Pod-shaped, the gaffs hunkered down into the land, their rough reddish sides hugged by the greensward, their lumpy thatched roofs lashed down by crude ropes. For hundreds of years – perhaps even since the dawn of the Knowledge itself, for the gaffs were known to be very ancient – they had gone by the names of the six clans of Ham. To the south of the stream, running from east to west, were the Edduns, Funch and Brudi gaffs; while on the north side were the Dévúsh, the Ridmun and the Bulluk. The Breakup had not changed this, although the dads now occupied the gaffs to the south of the stream, and the mummies those to the north. That the Hamsters should cleave so to this redundant nomenclature was only one of the reasons why their Driver was now insisting that the unsanitary manor – with its dwellings shared by kith and kine – be demolished and a new one built.

On a frayed patch of ground a few paces from the Ridmun gaff, Fred Ridmun, the Guvnor of Ham, together with three of the other dads, had knocked together a gibbet big enough to hang the moto from once its throat had been cut. In late autumn, when several motos were slaughtered, such a gibbet would have been far larger, and all the Hamstermen would have spent a blob or more building it. However, for this, the midsummer’s feast for the Hack’s party, only one moto was to be slain.

This was Runti, who now lay on his side, slack flesh squidging from under him, his tank slopping, his arse bubbling. His legs were lashed with some of the better imported rope, a length of which was also slung over the top beam of the gibbet. At the moto’s head knelt Carl, together with his stepdad, Fred. Carl held a small knife that was hidden in the dense wattles of the beast’s throat. Fred was tall like all of the Ridmun clan, his hair lanky, his beard a lustrous, curly brown, his eyes a stony grey, his lips sickle-sharp and sickle-curved. He was a dävine dad, so he called over the slaughter run:

– Leev on rì smiffeeld, leffpoltreeavenoo, leffchartaowse … rìfarringdunlayn …

His stepson stroked Runti’s stubbly brow as the run and its points were called.

– Tym 2 go nah, Runti, he said.

– Nó hwurtin, the moto lisped.

– Nah, nó hurtin, yul ardli feel í.

This was true, because at that very instant Carl pressed the knife deep into the beast’s neck and a maroon tide pulsed out on to the bare earth. Púlupp! Fred cried to Fukka Funch, Sid Brudi and Ozzi Bulluk. The three dads began hauling on the end of the rope; it came taut, and the moto’s bleeding body was dragged jerkily towards the wooden frame, leaving an old irony stain in its wake. Giss an and! Fukka shouted to the gang of Chilmen who were standing a way off, looking on both enthralled and horrified.

Reluctantly the Hack’s pedalers detached themselves from the group, strolled over and grabbed the rope. All eight dads gathered as much purchase as they could and pulled. Their muscles knotted, their backs creaked, the gibbet groaned. First Runti’s hindquarters, then his sagging tank lifted from the ground. Carl stayed by his head, whispering endearments:

Iss orlrì, luvvi, doan wurri, ear we go, nó long nah, ittul B bé-er wen ure up on ve fingi.

– Itun hwurtin, Cwarl. Eye hwurtin sum, the moto protested, and one of his large hands sought out his musher’s smaller one.

– Onli a lyttul, Runti, onli a lyttul, an itull soon B ovah an yul ave a nyce kip.

– Mwy nek hwurtin, Cwarl, ish hwurtin.

The moto’s whole body – which was the length of one and a half men and considerably bulkier – was now part-resting on his crumpled neck. Then, with a great heave and a shout from the hauliers, the moto cleared the ground and swung free, a fat, fleshy pendulum spraying pink mist.

While all this had been going on, the Driver was coming along the bay from his semi, his back stiff, his bright orange trainers glaring as the hem of his black robe rose and fell, his mirror flashing in the foglight, the sign of the wheel embroidered on his breast commanding attention. Now he came up to the Hack’s party and turned his back on them. The Hack, Mister Greaves, was staring full into Runti’s dying face.

– Ware2, guv, he said to the Driver in a cursory fashion.

– To New London, came the answer in Arpee with considerably more solemnity.

– Iss awlways a fyn fing 2 C a moto slorta, said Mister Greaves, grabbing the loose stuff of his long T-shirt with both hands so that it stretched over his pot tank.

– Maybe, the Driver snapped. At any rate, it’s a practice the Hamsters wouldn’t wish to forgo.

Carl looked up into the Driver’s mirror and saw there cold black eyes under high, white, gull’s-wing eyebrows. The lad bent back to stroking Runti’s muzzle, murmuring:

– Vare-vare, vare-vare, Runti, soon ovah, soon ovah …

– Why should they forgo it, Reervú? said Mister Greaves, setting his jaw and thrusting out his long, wispy ginger beard. His nose was bulbous, his brows beetled, his cheeks were tenderized with old pox scars – yet he fronted up well. Still, the Driver had got to him – so much so that he had shifted to Arpee as he bit and nibbled his curry-stung lips.

– Because the moto is real, not toyist … The Driver’s voice was low, but his enunciation was perfectly clear. Even in chitchat he sounded like a zealot … and only toyist beasts may be scoffed.

– Come off it, Dad. Mister Greaves was up for a bit of bother, and the dads, who’d by now finished lashing Runti to the gibbet, came up to hear them. The moto is a sacred creature, ordained as such by the Book!

– On one reading perhaps. The Driver hooked his hands into the side vents of his robe, mimicking Mister Greaves’s posture. However, on the true one – as higher authorities would tell you, if you listened clearly – it is an abomination.

The Chilmen – both the Hack’s pedalers and the sick fares – certainly looked disposed to agree with the Driver. Carl recognized two of the older pedalers – they’d been in the party on previous summers – while the rest of them, some twenty dads in all, had never visited Ham before. In the lad’s eyes fares and pedalers alike were a motley crew, their awkward bones an ill fit for their scrawny hides. Their blue caps, yellow tops and red jeans were garish – babyish even – and naturally most of them bore fresh pox scars or weeping goitres. The Chilmen stood as close to the Hack as their rank allowed and stared at the moto with frank disgust.

– Í lúks lyke an abominowotsit 2 me, said a slight man, whose bald head was cloven by a fresh trepanning wound. Í az ve eyes ovva ooman, ve teef, ve cok an balls 2. Iss feet ar lyke ands wiv pads uv flesh mell-éd intavem, but iss muzzle iz lyke a burgakynes an iss bodi iz lyke vat uv an idëus bäcön … Í duz me fukkin éd in.

– Me 2! Yeah, me 2! the other Chilmen cried.

Carl continued to cradle Runti’s upside-down head in his arms, heedless of the blood coursing down his neck and blotting out his T-shirt. With one hand he held an earflap closed, with the other he stroked the moto’s bulging jonckheeres. He went on whispering into the beast’s free ear, Vare-vare, Runti, vare-vare, mì sweet … but it seemed doubtful that the moto could hear him, for his baby-blue eyes were rolled back in their sockets, while his breath came in a laboured squeak and his blood continued to pulse. Then Runti gave a final convulsive shudder, arching his long back, snapping the ropes. Before, the dying creature had lisped in an undertone; now a single clear statement issued from his already bluing lips: Eye thleepy nah! Gonna B wiv Dave! Then he went completely slack. Carl stepped back from the gibbet, letting go of Runti’s head, and plodded away, his face averted so the dads couldn’t see his tears. He wished it were Changeover day with all his heart.

– Bluddë el! the cloven-headed Chilman said wondrously, iss trew, ven – vat vey speek!

Hmm, yes, the Driver answered him, but only with the voice of a child just weaned; they have no more reason than any toyist beast.

– Be that as it may, said Mister Greaves, pulling his shirt still tighter around his tank, I’ve been Hack here at Ham for twenty-five years now and I’ve learned to love the moto well enough. I’d advise you, dads of my party, to love this fine beast too. His flesh will preserve you, his fat will grease you, and once it’s extracted his oil will – as you well know – prove the most effective of remedies for whatever ails you. Is this not why you’ve been allowed to come here, to this most distant and yet dävine island of our Lawd’s? Nah – he slewed angrily into Mokni – pissoff ve ló-uv U – go an kip in yer gaff. Yaw oasts av wurk 2 do – rispek vem.

The Chilmen scattered in obedience, heading up the stream to the travelodge and disappearing one after another into its dark doorway, their faces still white with astonishment.

The Driver addressed the Hack:

– Mister Greaves, come and have a cuppa at my gaff; there’s matters we must talk over before tonight’s do.

– And tomorrow’s Council. Greaves looked over at Carl as he said this.

– Yes, and tomorrow’s Council. Shall we go?

They walked away, the Driver taking his first few paces backwards before spinning on his heel; yet neither – in the mirror or directly – gave the slaughtered moto so much as a backward glance.

Once the off-islanders were all gone, the Hamstermen set to work with a vengeance. From an oilcloth bundle Fred Ridmun drew out a hooked knife the length of his forearm. Fukka Funch dragged a large piece of oilcloth beneath Runti’s dangling head. Carl put his weight on the dead moto’s arms. Ozzi Bulluk pulled the rope that kept one of its hind feet lashed to the gibbet as tightly as possible, splaying the moto’s legs. Its genitals, tank and ribs were all thrown into prominence. Taking a deep breath and crying out, Stikk í 2 im, Dave! Fred thrust the knife into the notch beneath the rib cage and, sawing vigorously, yanked it up. Hide and flesh parted with a loud popping sound, and Runti’s guts flumped down in a tangled mass on to the cloth. Fukka moved in at once with a shorter knife and, feeling around in the moto’s abdominal cavity, cut the intestines away. Behind him came Carl with a pail of sea water, which he sloshed up into the gory hole, slooshing out any shit or half-digested fodder. Carl was laughing as he barged Fukka out of the way, and instead of clumping him the dad laughed as well. It mattered not how old or how dävine you were – butchering a moto was always a joyous occasion so far as the Hamsters were concerned.

The mummies and opares now came out from where they’d been waiting in a huddle behind the Brudi gaff. Hitching up their cloakyfings, they crossed the stream and came towards the slaughter site. All that morning the Hamsters’ huge irony kettle had been simmering over a fire a few paces away from the gibbet. Now the women went to this, formed a chain, poured pails of boiling water and passed them, hand to hand, to Carl, who attached them to a rope and winched them up so that they could be tipped over the carcass. Once it was well and truly scalded, the dads dragged over boards and trestles to make up the skinning table. This was assembled immediately under the scaffold and the dead moto lowered down on to it.

Next the daddies lined up along one side of the table and the mummies along the other. Short, broad-bladed knives were taken out from another cherished bundle and distributed among them. Then the company set to, scraping the thick bristles from the hide. Carl was too young to take part in this work; nevertheless he loitered near by and even risked smiling at his mum, Caff. She smiled back while the others chose not to notice this exchange.

For twelve long years the Driver had sought to snuff out such intercourse between the sexes; however there were some of the Hamsters’ rituals that he could neither proscribe nor modify. When the Hack’s party came and the moto was slain, the dads and mums spoke to one another with warm vitality, exchanging news, opinions and especially gossip about the strangers, their remarks shooting back and forth across the table as rapidly as their knives scraped at the hide. Had the Hack accepted the rent? What illnesses or deformities did the Chilmen have? Was there any news of Chil, or even of the world beyond? What business did the Hack have with their Driver? And most importantly: what had been brought to trade? Was there fresh seed? Woolly? Fags? Booze even?

The foglamp beat down on them out of a blue screen that tinted at the southern horizon, the sea pitter-purled against shingle, the gulls cawed over the Gayt, the flying rats coo-burbled from the top of the home field, the sweat stood out on the grafters’ brows, and the mummies – with the Driver gone – risked loosening their cloakyfings. When free-flowing, the Hamsters’ chitchat had the intimacy of thought, so when the old moto-skinning rap started up it was like a mummy humming to her sprog.

– Allö, mö-ö, cum 2 feed us, cum 2 eel us, the mummies called.

And the daddies responded:

– Tara, öl mayt, gissa cuddul B4 U dì.

Summoning himself as if from a dream, Fred wiped the sweat from his reddened brow and fixed the company with his flinty gaze. The mums and dads left off singing, downed tools and looked over towards the Driver’s gaff, but, seeing the smoky ribbon that coiled from his chimney, they began singing again – if anything a little louder. Fred shrugged and joined in with them.

By the time the moto’s hide had been scraped, its carcass skinned, and its blubber flensed and set out in a number of pots for trying out, the slaughter site was crawling with flies, and blood had crusted on the sward. Fred and Ozzi had expertly disjointed the moto’s limbs and hacked off its hams, shins, feet and hands. Runti’s head had been severed and borne off by the mummies to make the headcheese for the Hack’s cake. His tank had been cut away from his guts and hung up to dry; it would be used to store his own oil. Fukka Funch had set up a second trestle table and was skilfully fashioning smaller cuts from the chunks of carcass and trimming off the side meat to be smoked. He then reserved the spare ribs and the tank meat – for these would be curried and barrelled. He cut out the heart, liver and kidneys from their viscous basketry and slithered them across the bloody boards into the hands of the waiting mummies. A smoky, meaty smell began to hang in a pall over the manor as the blubber started to simmer.

The other kids had returned from the woodland, and, as it was daddytime, the opares fed them with odd scraps of flesh, quickly fried up with handfuls of herbs. Then they were packed off with a tot of moto gubbins to ward away the pedalo fever. Fred retrieved the moto’s slack bladder from Fukka’s table, washed it in a pail, found its opening, inflated it with a few breaths and tied it off with a length of sinew. He tossed the whitish sphere towards the little kids, and Ad Brudi – who although only seven was a head taller than the others – grabbed it and ran off down to the shore. The whole pack followed after him, hooting and yelling as they batted it between them. They ran around the bay, and, as they passed the Driver’s semi, he loomed in the doorway, a tall and threatening figure. The other kids wormed their way through the blisterweed, but he managed to catch hold of Ad and took the bladder from him. Shaking it, the Driver held it up to the screen, then returned it to Ad and sent him back towards the dads.

At the slaughter site Ad handed the bladder to Fred.

– Ve Driver sez í aint rì fer ve kids 2 B larkin abaht.

– So B í, the Guvnor said grimly, and he tied the bladder to the side of the gibbet, where it wobbled in the breeze.

Carl had no idea how Antonë Böm had arrived in the manor without being noticed, but he looked up from currying the meats to find that the teacher was standing right by his shoulder.

– Ware2, guv, Böm said.

– 2 Nú Lundun, Carl replied.

A smirk played upon Antonë’s fat wet lips. He compressed them and emitted the buzzing noise that signified his abstraction from the workaday toil of the Hamsters. His spectacles flashed the foglamp in Carl’s eyes, his prematurely white beard lay lank on his bulbous chin. His cheeks were heavily scarred with the pox, his jeans were full – but his tank fuller. His soft, plump hands, with their tiny, recessed nails, dwelt on his swelling hips. Carl blanked him and concentrated on rubbing coarse seacurry into the moto meat.

– So, Böm asked after a while, az Runti bin chekked?

– Sluffoffs ovah vare. Carl jerked a thumb at the skin that lay at Fukka’s feet, buzzing with flies. Böm ambled over and began to sort through the greasy folds. At once Fred was by his side.

– Ware2, guv, he snapped.

– 2 Nú Lundun, Böm cooed. Eyem juss lookin fer ve mark.

– No bovver, Tonë, said Fred, refusing to be mollified. U no azwellaz me vat Runti woz reel enuff; úve seen iz mark a fouwzan tymes.

– Stil, we muss chekk í, iss ve way, innit. Böm carried on examining the moto skin.

– Iss nó yer graft, Tonë, an djoo no í!

Fred grabbed the skin, so that the two men held it stretched between them. The foglight streamed through the membrane, perfectly illuminating the phonics C-A-L-B-I-O-T-E-C-H. Looking from the Guvnor’s angry face to his mentor’s quizzical one, Carl felt his riven mind part still more.

– C! Fred spat in the dirt. Reel enuff fer U, Tonë, reel enuff?

Late in the third tariff, when the headlight was close to dipping, Antonë Böm sat writing in his journal. His tiny, one-roomed semi lay two hundred paces beyond the Driver’s on the shore of the inlet known as Sid’s Slick. The room was bare, the brick walls unpainted. The tiny table was dwarfed by his plump form, and his plump form was overseen by the dark shadow the letric threw on the walls, a shadow that shifted uneasily in a draught. It had been a long tariff – the Driver had called over with great zeal. He had led the Hamstermen and the Chilmen in at least twenty runs and their points. The Hamsters – as was their way – had been cowed, as gluttonous for this spiritual sustenance as they were for the feast to come. The Hack’s party, as in previous years, had been overawed by such Dävinanity in this peculiar place at the very edge of the Lawyer’s dominion. Yet the Driver was clever enough to be politic – his battle for the fares of the Hamsters was a protracted one; and when the tariff had rolled on, the headlight had been switched on and the dashboard shone out over the placid lagoon, he faded away to his own gaff, so that Runti’s flesh could be eaten and the sick dads of Chil anointed with moto oil.

Later still, old raps were sung in the island’s Mokni, Effi Dévúsh making the call and the whole population – mummies, daddies, boilers, opares and kids – the response. Then the dancing commenced. In the margins of the firelight, where the shadows flickered and the darkness took on substance, Böm saw the gaunt form of Luvvie Joolee, the Exile, who had crept up to observe the festivities. She must by now, he thought, know what awaits Carl and me at first tariff. He tried to catch her eye but to no avail, for the tragic old boiler ignored him.

The last thing Böm noticed before he left were the wide eyes of the Chilmen, glazed by moto-oily gluttony, as they watched the increasingly abandoned gyrations of the Hamsters, pissed on the booze they’d brought, fags dangling from their sloppy lips. He guessed what the Chilmen were thinking: what a contrast there was between piety and licentiousness! The Chilmen cast surreptitious glances at the opares – who had undone their cloakyfings most immodestly. No doubt the pedalers and sick fares alike were wondering if they could afford the childsupport.

Böm could not rest – his lumpy sofabed held no appeal for him. In the morning the Guvnor and the Hack would deliberate everything before the Council. Who knew what else might come out concerning him and Carl? The Hamsters could not forbear from speaking when spoken to, and who could guess what Caff might say if she were examined? Böm had no illusions about what awaited him if he were returned to London. It was the curse of his speculative mind that had brought him to Ham in the first place, and the Inspectors had long memories while the PCO’s Examiners possessed the harshest of powers. He sighed, dipped his biro in the inkwell and scratched on into the night.

Carl Dévúsh couldn’t sleep either. When he finally went to his bed in the Funch gaff, and threw himself on to the rough palliasse in among the hurly-burly of his mates’ limbs, their dream cries and night farts beset him. His mind stirred and turned. He recalled the bizarre garb of the Chilmen, their red jeans and ornate leather trainers. Every word the off-islanders spoke betrayed an unsettling incomprehension of all that was certain to Carl: the firm ground of Ham itself. To go out into the world of these fares, what would that be like? Besides, from what Antonë had told him, the strange ways of the Chilmen were as nothing compared to those of Londoners. It wasn’t the threat of the PCO and its Inspectors that bothered Carl – such things were too remote – but the loss of his home, his beautiful island.

Towards first tariff, Carl crept out from the box bed, slapped across the yok flags, unlatched the door and went out into the greying gloom. He followed the same route he had the day before, back across the home field, over the ridge and around Hel Bä until he reached the old tower. Dave had switched off the headlight, but Carl had no need of it to find his way. He could have walked the whole island – saving the zones – in his sleep. Once at the tower, he walked under the heavy lintel, ignoring the buddyspikes growing out of the stonework that tore at his face. It wasn’t strictly forbidden to enter the five towers of Ham, although it wasn’t altogether allowed. Nevertheless the children had all been in before, frightening each other with tales of how the giants would get them. Sitting down in the remains of a fireplace, Carl looked up through the open roof of the tower to the screen. The dashboard still shone up there, the arrangements of lights the same as those he had been taught to recognize by Caff when he was a little fare, sitting on her lap on the ground outside the Ridmun gaff, his head nestling in the hollow of her neck.

– Vass ve édlite, she’d said, ven iss on fulbeem we C ve lites ahtside, yeah, ve streetlites uv Nú Lundun. An ven iss dipped, we C ve dashbawd, rì, mì lyttul luv?

– Owzabaht Dave, Mummi, vairs ee?

– Ees sittin infruntuv uz, luv, but we carn C im coz ees invizzibull.

– But ee can C uz, carn ee, Mummi?

– O yeah, mì luv, ee can C uz, ee sees uz in iz mirra. Ees lookin awl ve tym – lookin in ve mirra á uz, an lookin froo ve screen 4 ve Loss Boy. An uppabuv im, mì luv, uppabuv im vairs ve Flyin I, an ee sees all ve wurl.

Yet now, seven years later, huddling in the fireplace at the giants’ tower, Carl doubted that Dave saw anything at all in his mirror – let alone him.

Midway through the first tariff of the following day, when the foglamp was already high over the Gayt, the dads of Ham gathered for the Council. While the Council wall was right by the manor, stands of willowstalk and blisterweed hid their deliberations from the prying eyes of mummies, opares and kids. The dads looked instead to the bay, where, through the sole gap in the vegetation, the Hack’s pedalo could be seen, drawn up on the shore. Although there were only twelve dads and granddads now, Fred had told Carl that in his own youth twenty dads had deliberated, while a generation before that there had been more than thirty – all pitching in to argue and dispute the business of the community.

In those days the Council had been a babel, but in the years since the Driver came among them order had been imposed on the noisy little assembly. This was never more noticeable than during midsummer, when for a full month the Hack’s party was in residence. Then the Council conducted itself with great solemnity, the better to impress the visitors. On the first day after the Hack had arrived it was customary for him to judge those wrongdoers who had committed crimes in the intervening year deemed too serious to be dealt with by the Guvnor. However, there were hardly ever any of these – theft and violence were all but unknown among the dads, while tittle-tattle, bubbling and other instances of bad faith were dealt with by Fred. A simple oath upon the Book was always sufficient to discover the truth, while a ticket of a few quid served for most offences.

The Driver had not intervened directly in the running of the Council – he was too wily for that. Yet the time the dads had to spend in the Shelter – a whole tariff each day, two every seventh – had brought a dävine rigour to everything they undertook. There was this dampener on the little assembly, and there were also the first symptoms of the pedalo fever: noses were clogged up, throats were sore, eyes watered. Some of the dads were gripped by an ague so severe that their newly bartered fags shook from their fingers and fell to the beaten earth. That the Council had to judge the most serious crime on the island in thirteen years weighed heavily upon all of them, not least because until thirteen years previously the concept – let alone the actuality – of flying had been unknown on Ham.

The Hack sat on the highest part of the circular wall. He gathered his bubbery carcoat about his hunched back in tight pleats. His full side whiskers – an anomaly among the Hamstermen, who grew their beards from the chins alone – gave him a magisterial air. Fred Ridmun stood before him, his official baseball cap in one hand, his cudgel in the other, while Carl and Antonë sat on the ground at his feet.

– Mì sun, Fred said, az bin gó á bì Tonë Böm, guv, ee nevah wooduv dun viss stuff wivaht Böm.

– U shor abaht vat? The Hack drew meditatively on his fag. Iz reel dad dun stuff lyke viss innal, innit?

– But wurs, Fred answered. Far wurs.

– Wot cood B wurs van diggin in ve zön, eh? Eye no wot sumuv U ló bleev in yer arts. Eye no U stil fink vat ve Búk woz fown ere on Am. U granddads iz öl enuff 2 remembah ve Geezer? There was a low murmur of assent. B4 King Dave vair woz enni numbah uv pissi lyttul playsez wot ad a clame 2 B ve craydul uv ar faif, innit? Another murmur. But ve Kings granddad, ee chaynjd all vat. Ee ad a revelashun vat ve Búk woz fahnd in Lundun, aint vat ve troof?

– Iss ve troof, the ailing Hamsters muttered.

– Iss nó juss ure zön wich iz ferbiddun – all ve zöns on Chil iz juss ve saym. Ven U need brik aw crete aw yok aw grint U gé í from ve edj. But U avent ve skil uv wurkin wiv ironi, an U av no Inspektur 2 soopavys such diggins. Nah vis bloke – he stabbed a finger at Böm –